Doctorat en sciences sociales, politiques et économiques / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The purpose of this study was to explore individual characteristics that allowed college achievement in Latina women who experienced teenage pregnancy. A specific objective of this study was to examine strengths for overcoming barriers and obstacles to higher education.

Every year many immigrant families become members of United States communities. Among these are international graduate students whose lives and identities, as well as those of their families, are changed as they negotiate between cultures and experiences. In this study, three Saudi graduate students share their stories about culture, education and literacy. This research employs narrative inquiry to answer the following question: What stories do Saudi immigrant students tell regarding their educational beliefs and experiences, as well as the experiences of their children in the U.S. and in Saudi Arabia? The participants' interview texts are the main data source. The three-dimensional narrative inquiry spaces of temporality, sociality, and place help identify the funds of knowledge in place throughout these narratives. Data analysis uses funds of knowledge as a theoretical lens to make visible the critical events in each narrative. These events point to themes that support the creation of a third space in which the participants negotiate being in two cultures as well as their storying across time to understand their own experiences. Themes of facing challenges, problem solving, adaptation, and decision-making connect these stories and support the discussion of findings within the personal, practical, and social justifications for this narrative inquiry. The participants' negotiation of being in two cultures as revealed here serves as a resource for educators in understanding the instructional needs of immigrant families. The findings also have the potential to contribute to changing existing misconceptions about this minority group and other immigrant groups. In a rapidly growing global community as the United States, such narratives provide insights that invite personal understandings and connections among diverse people.

This study set out to investigate how students construct their identities. Throughout their socialisation into academia, students are confronted with the paradox of learning as they negotiate the opposing discourses of enslavement and mastery that construct higher education. Utilising a critical discursive psychology approach this research aimed to examine the implications this paradox holds for the development of students’ identities. In-depth interviews with five master’s degree students allowed for an examination of the linguistic resources available for students to draw on in constructing their accounts of student-hood. Analysis of the interpretive repertoires and ideological dilemmas in the text revealed the uptake of contradictory subject positions in participants’ navigation of academic discourse. In order to address the inconsistencies associated with these conflicting ways of being a student, participants ‘worked’ a face in their interactions with academic discourse. Their face-work served to address the paradox by integrating the contradictory positions evident in their accounts. It is in the agency displayed in the integration of these disparate positions that the emancipating student is revealed. / Psychology / M.A. (Research Consultation)

This research is set within the context of the Kenyan Public Universities, where with the changing student population dynamics, students are increasingly choosing to combine parenting with studies. Many of these student parents both male and female have had to negotiate the academic requirements as well as the burden of parenthood. Such a study is important at this time of privatization and liberalization of higher education in order to open up public discourse on the provision of higher education and the effect on the socio-economic status of the students. Using qualitative research analysis based on socio-educational, socio cultural as well as socio-economic status (SES), a study was designed and conducted with the question posed: What are the socio-educational approaches of public universities with respect to student parents. Eighteen (18) interviews of ten (10) university officials and eight (8) student parents formed the research sample. Qualitative research questions were prepared in an in-depth interview guide and a focus group questioning route. Data revealed that there are students both male and female who are actively parenting in the public university and that they face role conflict and financial challenges which impacts on retention and completion rates of students in the public university. The research argues that there is need to create awareness of socioeconomic status (SES) in the university approach to inclusiveness of all students as well as student parents. Recommendations based on this study should be helpful as guidelines for a model on guidance for student parents as well as documentation of a clear policy on approaches or support for student parenthood in the public university. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Socio-Education)

This thesis examines the convergence of neoliberal rhetoric across popular media, academic, and institutional discourses, and draws connections between contemporary women's travel literature and common scripts in study abroad promotion. Finding such narratives to be freighted with ethnocentric constructs and tacit endorsements of market-based globalization, I critique the mainstreaming of neoliberal attitudes that depict travel as a commodity primarily valuable for its role in increasing the worth of U.S. American personhood. I question both the prevailing definitions of "global citizenship" and the ubiquitous claims that study abroad prepares students for "success in the global economy" as ideological signifiers of a higher education system that is increasingly corporatized. Utilizing a postcolonial and transnational feminist theoretical framework, the thesis offers a literary analysis of contemporary women's travel memoirs, examining patterns of narcissism and "othering" in their depictions of cross-cultural encounter, and connects these neoliberal trends to consumerism in higher education, study abroad, and post-second wave feminism. Shared themes in the representation of privileged U.S./Western women abroad and the student-consumer model in higher education bespeak a movement toward individual international engagements that reinforce corporate motives for travel and endorse the commodification of global environments, cultures, and people. In hopes of contesting this paradigm, I argue for the reassertion of a social justice-oriented definition of global citizenship and for educational models that foster self-criticism and the decolonization of knowledge. / Graduation date: 2012

This study set out to investigate how students construct their identities. Throughout their socialisation into academia, students are confronted with the paradox of learning as they negotiate the opposing discourses of enslavement and mastery that construct higher education. Utilising a critical discursive psychology approach this research aimed to examine the implications this paradox holds for the development of students’ identities. In-depth interviews with five master’s degree students allowed for an examination of the linguistic resources available for students to draw on in constructing their accounts of student-hood. Analysis of the interpretive repertoires and ideological dilemmas in the text revealed the uptake of contradictory subject positions in participants’ navigation of academic discourse. In order to address the inconsistencies associated with these conflicting ways of being a student, participants ‘worked’ a face in their interactions with academic discourse. Their face-work served to address the paradox by integrating the contradictory positions evident in their accounts. It is in the agency displayed in the integration of these disparate positions that the emancipating student is revealed. / Psychology / M.A. (Research Consultation)

Les réformes de l'enseignement supérieur européen reconfigurent en profondeur les missions et l'organisation des universités. L'objet de notre thèse est de décrire les caractéristiques de la « nouvelle université capitaliste » telle qu’elle émerge progressivement par la mise en application du « modèle » de l’université de marché.<p>Dans une première partie, nous questionnons l'origine de ce modèle d'université de marché, en le confrontant aux différents "modèles historiques" qui ponctuent l'histoire des universités modernes. Nous étudions alors l'évolution des missions de recherche et d'enseignement des universités.<p>Afin d'interroger la description ainsi offerte de la nouvelle université capitaliste à l'aune de constat empiriques, nous interrogeons dans la seconde partie les différentes manières par lesquelles elle contribue à reproduire les inégalités sociales, à produire des héritiers et des « miraculés ». Cela nous permet de raffiner la description et de montrer quelques propriétés particulières de l'université en cours d'avènement.<p> / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

This research is set within the context of the Kenyan Public Universities, where with the changing student population dynamics, students are increasingly choosing to combine parenting with studies. Many of these student parents both male and female have had to negotiate the academic requirements as well as the burden of parenthood. Such a study is important at this time of privatization and liberalization of higher education in order to open up public discourse on the provision of higher education and the effect on the socio-economic status of the students. Using qualitative research analysis based on socio-educational, socio cultural as well as socio-economic status (SES), a study was designed and conducted with the question posed: What are the socio-educational approaches of public universities with respect to student parents. Eighteen (18) interviews of ten (10) university officials and eight (8) student parents formed the research sample. Qualitative research questions were prepared in an in-depth interview guide and a focus group questioning route. Data revealed that there are students both male and female who are actively parenting in the public university and that they face role conflict and financial challenges which impacts on retention and completion rates of students in the public university. The research argues that there is need to create awareness of socioeconomic status (SES) in the university approach to inclusiveness of all students as well as student parents. Recommendations based on this study should be helpful as guidelines for a model on guidance for student parents as well as documentation of a clear policy on approaches or support for student parenthood in the public university. / Educational Studies / D. Ed. (Socio-Education)

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)